Ten Extraordinary Predictions for 2025 from Fiction

It’s 2025, and a new year is underway. Who knows what the coming months have in store? Well, if you struggle to imagine what 2025 might look like, you are in luck. Many great minds (and some not-so-great minds) from the world of fiction have dreamt up a gamut of outlandish predictions.

Some paint 2025 as a trailblazing year, with flashy new technology like chore-busting robots, sophisticated clones, and bioengineered body parts. Others see the future as a nightmare apocalypse marred by fierce conflict, crooked politicians, and environmental disasters. From bloodthirsty aliens in The Outer Limits to Stephen King’s lethal take on reality TV, here are ten visions for 2025.

Related: 10 Books That Accidently Showed Us Our Future

10 The Bone Clocks, 2014 Novel

If David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks is anything to go by, we’re in for a wild ride in the year ahead. Written by the acclaimed author of Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks follows psychic adventurer Holly Sykes from a teenager in the 80s to a war-torn vision of the future. The mammoth novel takes place over six sections, and in section five, “An Horologist’s Labyrinth,” Sykes arrives in 2025. It’s a bleak image of the now-present, overrun with ritual child killings, bloodthirsty hunters, and immortal soldiers.

A brutal battle has broken out between two groups of “atemporals”—fantasy beings who have discovered how to evade death. One tribe holds the secret to reincarnation, while the other slaughters children to lengthen their lives. The book’s title is a slur for humans, who are sneered at by the atemporals for growing old and dying. Mitchell is wild and excessive in his ideas, especially his rendering of 2025. But it’s an interesting view of what might be in store nonetheless.^[1]

9 Future Hunters, 1988 Movie

“A once proud world has been reduced to ruin, famine, and despair in the bitter aftermath of war.” So begins the action flick Future Hunters, which offers a heavily Mad Max-inspired look at what the future might hold. It’s an arid, desolate world, ravaged by a nuclear war that broke out decades earlier. The only hope to save humanity lies in an ancient biblical spear with the power to travel through time.

Reviewers described the film as a protracted fight sequence that lurches across decades and around the globe. One moment, Robert Patrick—Arnie’s foe in Terminator 2—and Linda Carol are running away from lawless American biker gangs. Next, they’re in Hong Kong seeking help from a Bruce Lee lookalike. In truth, this ridiculous mess of a movie has little to say about 2025 other than the usual tired, post-apocalypse cliches. But that’s mainly because the writers are more concerned with watching the main couple fend off Nazis in Manila.^[2]

8 “The Duplicate Man,” 1964 Outer Limits Episode

Based on a 1951 short story by Clifford Simak, “The Duplicate Man” sees classic TV show The Outer Limits explore the dangers of space exploration. The classic U.S. sci-fi series had high hopes for the future. They thought that by 2025, humans would have scouted other planets and found all sorts of alien life, enough to fill a museum with unearthly critters. On top of that, scientists have come up with advanced cloning techniques.

Cloning humans is outlawed, as is importing murderous aliens. However, that does not stop renegade researcher Henderson James from doing both. The wealthy tearaway smuggles an illegal Megasoid to Earth. He then realizes his mistake when the bloodthirsty beast escapes and creates a clone of himself to destroy it because he is too much of a coward to clean up his mess.^[3]

7 Futuresport, 1998 Movie

Futuresport is one of those movies that does what it says on the tin—a sports film set in the future. 2025, to be specific, where the athletes have hoverboards and rollerblades. They play a radical hockey-like ball game known as futuresport. Futuresport is the brainchild of mastermind Obike Fixx, aka Wesley Snipes, putting on a Jamaican accent.

In 2025, the teams are not just playing for prizes and trophies. Futuresport has become a means of colonial expansion. World superpowers send their best players to battle it out for the right to take over new territories. In the movie, we see North America and the Pan-Pacific go head-to-head for control of Hawaii. Readers will be unsurprised to learn that this film was released straight to video.^[4]

6 The Bots Master, 1993 TV Show

A short-lived cartoon that viewers remember fondly, The Bots Master is a tale of corruption-busting robots defending the world from corporate greed. Most works in this list take a negative view of the 21st century. But in The Bots Master, technology has gotten better and better. Robots are a common part of everyday life, as they help with chores and take the stress out of life. It’s all thanks to Ziv “ZZ” Zulander, a talented inventor with a flair for building new robots, and his work for the Robotic Megafact Corporation, aka RM Corp.

It seems like all is well in this animated 2025. But that’s until ZZ learns of a diabolical plan by RM Corp’s president to take over the planet via a robot coup. The evil CEO has found a way to reprogram the bots and force them to obey his orders. That’s right, a power-hungry tech billionaire hellbent on world domination. Could something like that really happen in 2025?

Anyhow, it’s up to ZZ and his crew of robot pals to fight back against the threat of tyranny. The Bots Master even comes with its own electro-hip-hop theme song, complete with breakdancing mechanoids and a sword-wielding robot ninja.^[5]

5 A Friend of the Earth, 2000 Novel

The theme of environmental collapse comes up time and time again in science fiction. Released at the turn of the millennium, T.C. Boyle’s A Friend of the Earth follows Ty Tierwater from a young, radical eco-activist to a jaded groundskeeper struggling to survive as the world falls into ruin.

Boyle depicts 2025 as an environmental wasteland plagued by torrid heat, pounding rain, and bitter storms. The death of natural habitats has wiped out most species. Farming is a constant battle. Social security is a thing of the past. Among all this destruction, the population is skyrocketing, putting even more strain on dwindling resources. But for all its grim predictions, the book does end with the hope that nature will find a way to regrow and return.^[6]

4 Titan, 1979 Novel

Titan is the first volume in John Varley’s acclaimed Gaea trilogy. The book tells of a crew of daring space explorers whose ship crashes into a giant station in orbit around Saturn. But what the astronauts find leaves them reeling for six: a far-out satellite world where centaurs roam free, odd plants grow, and the conditions are always in flux.

Varley’s future vision might be the most surreal in this list. His works often delve into fantasy, with magical creatures and whimsical adventures. One reviewer described the crew’s journey to the hub of this absurd outpost as something out of The Wizard of Oz.^[7]

3 Repo Men, 2010 Movie

A cynical look at the healthcare industry, the sci-fi action flick Repo Men envisions a future where a money-grabbing firm called the Union sells artificial organs at sky-high prices. Patients can buy them on credit. But if they fail to pay, they might find Jude Law and Forest Whitaker crashing through their door to take the organs back by force. The movie sees Law get a taste of his own medicine when he falls into debt on his own artificial heart. He and Whitaker flee the country while rival repo men try to track them down.

Based on Eric Garcia’s book The Repossession Mambo, viewers widely agreed that Repo Men was a bit of a shoddy film. However, it takes an interesting look at the impact of corporate greed on medical care. The movie also shows the amazing potential that bioengineered body parts hold.^[8]

2 334, 1972 Novel

Thomas M. Disch is a key figure among the New Wave of sci-fi writers who transformed the genre in the ’60s and ’70s. A renowned cynic, he paints New York in 2025 as a lawless world overrun with crooked politicians, power-crazed eugenicists, and downtrodden residents struggling to get by. Vast overpopulation and pressure on resources have led to the government bringing in controls on who can or cannot have children.

Disch takes the reader to a filthy, poverty-stricken future where morgue workers sell off smuggled corpses, and rich kids are so bored with their lives that they plot murder. Others are plied with drugs by the government to distract from their mundane lives. Disch passed away in 2008, but it’s a testament to his talent as a writer that his work still feels so topical all this time later.^[9]

1 The Running Man, 1982 Novel

Stephen King is celebrated as one of the most loved writers in the history of genre fiction. Although probably best known as a horror author, his work spans myriad styles such as prison drama (Shawshank Redemption), suspense (Gerald’s Game), and, of course, dystopian sci-fi.

In The Running Man, King once again proves himself to be a master imagineer. He published the book under the pen name Richard Bachman in 1982, offering readers a bleak look at what the future had in store. The world’s economy tanked, and the U.S. is run by power-crazed despots. To keep people in line, the state pumps out twisted propaganda like the TV game show The Running Man. Contestants are on the run from an elite crew of network-hired butchers. Survive, and you win a mass cash prize that will change your life. Get caught, and the stalkers kill you, live-streamed to the masses.

For a book King supposedly wrote in 72 hours, The Running Man is often praised for its insightful picture of 2025. Disinformation is everywhere, the air is thick with pollution, and the gap between rich and poor has never been so clear. The Running Man first hit the big screen in 1987, which saw Arnold Schwarzenegger flee from hitmen around a dystopian Los Angeles. Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver) is set to come out with another Running Man movie later in the year, this time more faithful to the text.^[10]